Comments on: Libertarianism without inequality (2)

By: Mike Huben

Mike Huben — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 18:34:38 +0000

Micha: Unimproved value of the land need only be approximated to give more equitable results with a Georgist tax than the firstcomer owns it outright model. Yes, it can be difficult to estimate: yet that is a task done routinely by real estate appraisers. And it can be coroborated in cases where improvements are destroyed by catastrophes such as fires. It can also be bounded by cases where purchasers remove previous improvements to make new ones. Single tax based on unimproved land values might be fine for rural areas, but it doesn’t make sense in urban areas where a great deal of property value is due to community infrastructure and the value of density and proximity. Then, taxation on full value would seem like a better proxy.

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:27:42 +0000

A reply to Chris’s latest post: (i) Military service: In the US, poor members of racial minorities without a university education bear a disproportionate share of the burden of military service, since the option of enlisting in the military which many middle class, university-educated whites would regard as radically inferior to their other job opportunities is the best available choice for many enlistees. In spite of this well-known fact, few liberals in the US advocate universal conscription. And the stated reason is the illiberal, coercive nature of conscription (though the fact that liberals tend to be middle class, university-educated whites is surely also relevant). (ii) Non-universal giving: I don’t think the case for non-universal giving over universal taxation depends on the altruism of the givers. For even if these givers gave purely out of a self-interested desire to gain a reputation for altruism, this would still be a case of non-universal provision, and I would still maintain the following: ‘If, for example, liberal egalitarians knew that enough money fully to provide for the disabled had been voluntarily raised and donated to the state by a small portion of the population, I doubt that many would insist that the state go ahead and coercively tax the non-[donating] majority of the population and give the [donating] minority partial rebates to ensure that each citizen make an equal sacrifice.’ (Libertarianism without Inequality, pp. 44-45, with the word ‘generous’ replaced by ‘donating’.)

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:24:56 +0000

Thanks to Mike Otsuka for his responses. I guess I wasn’t clear enough about why I don’t think the volunteer army case doesn’t do the work that Mike wants it to do. The case arises in the context of a discussion where some X cannot be provided by universal voluntary donation. So, pressed for a second-best solution, should we abandon universality or voluntariness. Mike wants to say that the reaction of most liberal egalitarians to volunteer armies (as opposed to universal conscription) shows that they value non-coercion above universality. But my thought is that the volunteer army case doesn’t really establish this. If we are a bit sophisticated about what universality requires here, then we ought to allow that it has not been breached in the volunteer army case because the individuals who volunteer (non-altruistically) get fully compensated for their contribution. It remains the case that the net cost of providing for national defence (viz, zero) remains equally distributed across the population. There’s room for quite a bit if argument and redescription of cases here, but it seems to me that whilst moving from universal to non-universal giving (of money) is clearly a breach of universality because the donors receive nothing in compensation, a volunteer army is at the very least, not a clear breach, because of the compensations the volunteers get.

By: david w.

david w. — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 09:51:16 +0000

And to be clear, even when I’m not dressing up like a libertarian, I see the estate tax as the best imaginable tax. In fact, I wouldn’t say “least offensive,” since I don’t find it offensive at all.

By: David W.

David W. — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 09:42:32 +0000

If I were a libertarian, I think I’d say the least offensive tax would be the estate tax, as it doesn’t take anything away from the people who did the work. Tax on umimproved land, if recently purchased with money gained from labor, could still be taking away from someone’s actual labor. (I’m still waiting for my copy of the book to arrive, so I shouldn’t even be commenting—but I must say I’m curious to see how an estate tax fits in. My hunch is that a hefty estate tax should be central to any reconciliation of egalitarian and libertarian commitments)

By: Micha Ghertner

Micha Ghertner — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 02:20:43 +0000

Troy, the problem with Georgism is that it is next to impossible to determine the “unimproved value of land” because the value of land is directly related to the value of the surrounding areas, which may or may not have been improved upon. That being said, a property tax based on some other standard other than improvements is probably the least offensive tax, even for libertarians.

By: Troy

Troy — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 00:27:01 +0000

Henry George added a lot to this discussion over a 100 years ago. The central argument is that Unimproved Land, being the product of no one, belongs in common stewardship of the “community”, and those who wish to monopolize the profits of Land by excluding others owe compensation to this community being excluded. Real-world implementation of this simple, self-consistent libertarian philosophy is taxing the unimproved value of land as close to 100% as possible. Geolibertarian FAQ

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 23:25:59 +0000

Chris writes: ‘…the case of voluntary donors and that of volunteer soldiers seems significantly disanalogous. Volunteer soldiers aren’t best thought of as altruistic givers: their motives for volunteering may include a hankering for the romance of military life and overseas travel…’ This particular disanalogy works in my favour, since it shows that liberals prefer a volunteer army to universal conscription even when the motives of the volunteers are not entirely noble, thus highlighting the importance which liberals place on avoiding coercion as opposed to promoting other values.

By: Pete Guither

Pete Guither — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 19:38:05 +0000

What disturbs me about this idea is that society becomes dependent on taxing criminals in order to fund a somewhat unrelated activity. If past experience is any indication (think asset forfeiture), this is likely to lead to a continual increase in crimes determined eligible for the tax, and ultimately informal quotas in arrests (think small town speed traps) in order to provide sufficient funding.

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 17:49:02 +0000

I guess Jay Conner doesn’t think white-collar criminals are ‘real criminals’. “The most common white-collar offenses include: antitrust violations, computer/internet fraud, credit card fraud, phone/telemarketing fraud, bankruptcy fraud, healthcare fraud, environmental law violations, insurance fraud, mail fraud, government fraud, tax evasion, financial fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bribery, kickbacks, counterfeiting, public corruption, money laundering, embezzlement, economic espionage, and trade secret theft…. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, white-collar crime is estimated to cost the United States more than $300 billion annually.” (http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/white_collar.html) These people seem to manage to take care of themselves. Those who have studied or taught at ivory tower institutions will have made contact with a number of students who would go on to commit tax evasion, insurance fraud, and other white collar crimes.

By: self

self — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 16:54:52 +0000

otsuka seems to propose an alternative vehicle for collections intended for a group dependent on some form of social insurance. Yet the only advantage is that the money is collected from less sympathetic and politically disenfranchised subjects. Two problems: 1)taxes will be collected not just for social insurance but for use of infrastructure. So it is only the additional increment of each taxpayer’s contribution to social insurance (over lifetime minus received benefits) that creates distortions or injustice. I’m guessing this is not substantial enough to claim that taxes as a whole is an unjust system. 2) Insuring for an outcome that occurs involuntarily from birth or calamity is markedly different from constructing rules of behavior with penalties for actions that harm others. A system of general revenue collection would seem to target the potential population of disabling outcomes much better than extracting additional tariffs from the incarcerated for an unrelated social outlay. I’m not convinced that Otsuka’s solution is more just, rather it’s a suggestion that probably leads to greater distortions. Also missing is some discussion of the implicit assumption of equal detection and prosecuion (and incarceration) of offenders…i don’t think anyone is buying that. Let’s review: taxes aren’t a form of punishment and law enforcement is not equally distributed across any reasonable metric that predicts criminal behavior. Back to the drawing board (or ivory tower).

By: Jay Conner

Jay Conner — Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:55:01 +0000

As a retired lawyer with some criminal justice experience, I can only shake my head in wonder at the towering ivory-towerism of this idea. Obviously to me, these thinkers have never made contact with any real criminals, most of whom are the inept of society, barely able to earn enough to take care of themselves, let alone anyone else.

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 23:13:17 +0000

My coblogger Randy can speak for himself, but he’s probably got the best-developed distinctively libertarian theory of punishment and restitution—and I’m pretty sure that on his account this would be necessarily unjust—a punishment that is neither aimed at making the victim whole nor at deterrence nor at restraint. The portion of the punishment that exceeds what’s needed for those three purposes is unjust; if it’s being done for the sake of someone else’s benefit, then the criminal is being unjustly used as a means. (It’s been a while since I ready Randy’s stuff on this—I may be conflating his theory with bits of my own intuition, here. But there’s nothing intrinsically libertarian about saying : the criminal has violated someone else’s rights, so let’s extract every last penny we can out of him.)